My name is Joel Oquendo, and this is the social media for realtors podcast tune in each week to get practical social media tips and hacks to help you close more deals and become the authority in your market. 
Hey, what's going on everybody today on our podcast, we are going to be talking about scheduling content. I know that the title does not sound super riveting, but I guarantee you that this will probably be one of the most valuable episodes that you actually take in and consume. All right. So I'm going to dive right into it. 
The, the benefits of scheduling content is that scheduling content allows you to plan in advance. To establish and maintain consistency. It saves you tons of time and you can even work when you're not working. All right. So I'm going to unpack this for us right now. Scheduling content is something that a lot of people did not even know. 
Probably until today that this was even a thing that you can schedule your posts ahead of time so that you're not playing the guessing game the day of your post. And so what scheduling allows you to do is, like I said, allows you to plan in advance. So it allows you to think to yourself, like, what are the days of the year that I absolutely have to post something, right? 
So let's start with holidays. Holidays are posts that we know the holidays are going to come every year. We know when Easter is going to be. We know when you know, when Christmas, Thanksgiving, when Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever it is that you celebrate, we know when these holidays are going to be happening, every single. 
Year. And so it's really important that we kind of plan ahead plan in advance so that we make sure not to number one, that we don't miss any holidays, but number two, so that we don't over work ourselves when creating content because there are some days of the year. It doesn't require you to be super creative. 
It just requires you to nail the holiday. Right? And so it allows you to plan in advance. It allows you to schedule posts before the day actually comes for that post so that if you're tied up or if you're busy or if there's something else that you have going on, you are able to continue to post, even though you're not actually posting in real time. 
Now, number two, it allows you to establish and maintain consistency guys, though. One characteristic that most realtors lack that that the realtors that are crushing it in most cases do have is consistency. Right. You have to wake up every day and, and, you know, crush it every single day. And so what this allows you to do is this allows you to bake in some consistency into your marketing plan. 
So that regardless of what's going on in your. There is something that will be running on autopilot if you do this correctly. All right. And when you schedule content, this allows you to for example, if you schedule a post on Monday and on Monday morning you know, you decide that you have to leave the country emergently for something some random event. 
That post is already scheduled. So it doesn't matter if you're at the airport, if you're on the airplane, doesn't matter if you're in a taxi that post is going to get posted whenever you scheduled it for. Okay. And so it's really, really important that you you know, that you, that you know that because. 
You know, this is going to allow you to bake in that consistency into your marketing plan so that you no matter what's going on in your life, you still have content that's being put out there. Because the main, the main goal of this is to maintain at the front of people's minds. Right? We want people to think about us when they're around the water cooler at work and somebody asking, Hey, does anybody know a realtor? 
Or I could really use the information on a good realtor. We want to be at the front of their mind and what this scheduling system that I'm going to discuss to you guys or discussed with you guys today. Going to allow you to do is it's going to allow you to maintain at the front of people's minds because people love being the person that says, I know a guy or I know a girl, right. 
And so if you schedule your content and your content is constantly being posted you're going to be at the front of people's minds because they're going to constantly see you on their news feeds you know, crushing it, doing real estate, right. The other thing that this is going to do is this is going to save you tons of time, guys. 
I spend about two to three hours a quarter. Okay. Scheduling three months worth of content. So in two or three hours, I schedule three months worth of social media posts. And I, don't got to think about it for another three months. Right. And so I'm able to. In the future three months. And it really opens up my time to be focusing on other things that are more important than posting on social media, even though social media posting is important because it's part of the marketing that drives, you know, the marketing machine that drives my business. 
And so and then finally you can work even when you're not working. Okay. This is, this is a funny story that I like to tell people. You know, my son started, started going to base. Last year and while he was going to baseball, I started scheduling posts. At the same time that he would be at baseball so that I could be with my son, but it would still look like I was out showing houses. 
Now, why did I do this? Number one, because I wanted people to still know that I'm actively out there doing real estate work. But I also wanted to spend time with my son. And so this allowed me the ability to to show my audience that. An active realtor that I'm working with clients that I'm actively doing work, but it also opened up the time for me to actually be with my family and spend time with them. 
And so by the time that we were done with baseball, we'd go have breakfast and then I'd go and I'd work with my clients. Right. But at the time that I was at baseball, I was appearing to be working even though I was not actually working. And so a lot of people, I can't tell you how many times I would get messages from people that would say, Hey you know, I I've seen that. 
You're crushing it on social media and we want you to come and check out our house and see if, you know, you could potentially list it. Or w you know, we've seen it. You're crushing on social media. How do we get in touch with a lender? We want you to help us buy a house. And the reason why that is, is because. 
The posts were continuously being posted. Okay. I was consistently posting content. I was doing so, you know, planning so far in advance that you know, one time I had a friend who I'm not going to say his name, but he was a fix and flipper and he had just acquired a property for an investor. They had just closed on the property before he had a chance to put insurance on the property. 
The house burned down. I know I'm as stressed out as you probably are right now. I'm just telling the story. However I had scheduled content to be posted while I was you know, while I was scheduling my content. And it just so happened that the meme that posted the Friday after. The Friday after my friend told me about his situation just happens to be a meme of a house on fire. 
And you know, somebody saying, I think the meme was something along the lines of you know, there's just minimal damage, you know, after the inspection or something like that, nothing structural or. You know, something along those lines. And you know, my friend saw the posting. He was like, not cool, bro. 
But it was really funny. I had, I was freaking out. I was like, no, no, no. I scheduled that post a long time ago. I didn't even know that I was posting this week. You know? He understood of course, and it was a, a good laugh that we had, but it was definitely something that, you know, it allowed me to. 
You know, my schedule was planned in advance and so I was able to continuously post and, you know, not have to worry about something, not posting that particular day. It just so happened that I planned so far in advance that it kind of came back and bit me. Right. But you know, it's, it's one of those things guys where you know, my, my father got sick last year. 
In 2021, beginning of 2021, my dad got really sick. He was struggling with diabetes and he was kind of like on his last you know, in his last moments and in January, he had to go into surgery to have his final leg amputated and You know, they went through, they did the procedure, he started recovering really well. 
And then he took a turn for the worst. In February, towards the end of February, I sat down and I spent a couple hours planning my content for March, April and may. And towards the end of February, we get a call from my mother that, Hey, you know, your dad's going to go into hospice here at the house and. 
You know, we would really love for you guys to start making plans to make your way down here or up here, I guess I should say to South Carolina and so. My wife and I made plans. We, you know, I'm I remember like it was yesterday, I'm getting the oil change on our car. I got a call from my mom and she says, Hey, if you guys drive over here he's probably not going to be alive when you get here. 
Because he doesn't look good. And you know, we don't know how long he's gonna last. So I called my brother-in-law and I told my brother-in-law. Pick up the carbon, it's done getting an oil change. I met my wife at the house and you know, we ended up going straight to the airport, booking a flight, my wife, my son and myself, flying South Carolina from Florida to be with my, with my family will. 
The funny thing is that my dad had always been a fighter. My dad had struggled through a lot of health issues and he'd always beat whatever it was that was trying to take him out. And in true fashion my father ended up surviving in home hospice for an entire month after we got there. And so, you know, we were able to kind of spend time with my dad and we were able to be there you know, with the family and with friends and stuff getting, you know, getting to spend that time with him. 
And while we were there because I had already scheduled all of my posts every single day. There was posts that were going out. After a month of being in South Carolina, my father passed away Easter weekend in 2021. And you know, we were there, we were there for the funeral help my mother tie up some loose ends after the funeral. 
And when I got back home, because my posts had all had been consistently posting. There was a lot of people that hadn't even realized that I was out of town. Not only that, but when I came back, I came back home to to two listing appointments from people who said, Hey, we've seen that you've been crushing it on social media. 
And we would love for you to come and check out our house and kind of tell us what our house is worth to potentially, you know, take it on as a listing. And you know, had, I it's, it's almost like a, like a light bulb went off in my head. I was like, oh my goodness. So what you're telling me is that All I have to do is manage the perception of what people are seeing on social media. 
And this can really open up some time freedom for me to wear. If I, if I timed this properly and if I schedule purposefully and intentionally I can free up time in my own schedule so that I can do the things that I actually love to do, like being present with my family for my father's last days. 
Right. And so it was something that for me, was such a gift that I was able to focus and be present. And when I came back, I didn't have. Stop my entire business and then started all over again. When I got back after you know, after being with my dad, because it was a new agent back then that was, that would have been devastating to my business. 
It would have meant I would have had to spend another, you know, 30 to 60 days just to start getting my pipeline up and running again. Because I had to take a month and a half off of work. Right. And so. When it comes to your actual scheduling workflow. What we want to focus on is a couple of things we want to focus on. 
Number one, the approach that you're going to utilize, number two, the software that you're going to use. Okay. And then number three, we're going to focus on the time when you should be focusing on. On these tasks. Right? So the very first thing that we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about the split approach. 
The split approach is something that I came up with. Because one day I was scheduling content and I was so not feeling creative. Right. And so you know, with the scheduling software that you select, most of them will just allow you to drag and drop your images or videos to the date that you want to schedule it for. 
And so what I ended up doing is I spent the entire time that I was scheduling, just dragging and dropping images to the places that I wanted them to go to the days that I wanted them to post. And then I came back a week and a half later to sit down and actually do the captions because I wasn't feeling creative that day. 
And so I wanted to leave the captions for a day while I was feeling a little bit more creative, a little bit more inspired so that I made sure that I really nailed those captions. Now, once I completed. You know, those two days worth of scheduling. You know, collectively, it probably took me about three to four hours that month or that quarter, I should say, to schedule those posts, but still three to four hours across two days to schedule three months worth of content is actually in my opinion, it's it's time well spent and it's actually a lot of time saved. 
And so the second approach that I usually employ is my full out approach. Okay. Full out approach is basically just taking images and videos. Dropping them on the days that they're going to get posted at the time slots that they're going to get posted. I do all the captions and everything on the same day. 
Okay. I like to do this you know, at the same time, because I like to see how my schedule unravels as I'm getting through impulsing all these things, right. And so I prefer the full out approach, but the split approach works really well, especially if you're not feeling super creative, but you know that you have to get this done. 
You can just spend a day drag and drop all of the images and videos where they go and then come back another day when you're feeling a little bit more refreshed and you know, sit down and knock out the captions or if you have the team to do so. Drag and drop the content and then let somebody else do the captions for you that also will work you know, beautifully. 
If you have somebody on your team, that's a writer that likes writing. That's a, that's a home run. And so when it comes to the scheduler that I use when I first started, I was using a scheduler called that's P L a N O L. And there's another one that's called HootSweet, which is very popular. 
And there's another one that's, that's pretty popular as well, called later. I actually have switched over to using later. I just liked the the user-friendliness of it. I liked the features that it, that it has within the system. I like the organization aspect of it, where I can kind of categorize all of my posts together so that. 
You know, topic is tagged and labeled and I can find it easily. So later is what I use actually right now. But I'm going to tell you guys the same thing that my broker says, the best system for you to use is the one that you actually use. All right. All of these schedulers are going to do basically the same thing. 
They're going to allow you to schedule your posts. Okay. They're gonna allow you to schedule your posts. And so you're going to want to connect with a scheduler and start scheduling your posts. As soon as possible so that you can open up your schedule and you can start baking in that consistency into your marketing efforts. 
All right. Now the final thing that I'm going to say about this is that when it comes down to when to actually work on this, I always recommend that you work on this during non-business hours. All right. If you're not able to, at times when you're not able to be showing houses. So if you're an early riser when you get back from the gym or whenever you do your morning routine before people wake up, work on this, or if you're like me and you're a night owl and you're awake till three, four o'clock in the morning do this at night when, when everybody's asleep and there's nobody awake to bother you. 
Just knock this out at night, don't spend the time that you could be closing deals working on social media posts. Okay. Just doesn't make sense. It's not the best, the most efficient use of retirement. You want to make sure that those prime hours of like eight to 6:00 PM or 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM are blocked off to do business. 
Okay. Now I hope that this has been helpful today. If you have any questions as always, you can send it to ask social media [email protected]. We would love to hear your questions and help you answer those questions. Please, please, please follow me on social media on Instagram at JOEL Oquendo. 
That's J O E L O Q U E N D O. And you can find me on Facebook at social media for realtors. You can join our group. It's an open public group and you can join us and you can get some freebies on there when you join. And we would love to have you remember guys that it's not about. The knowledge that you have, but the action that you take, we'll see you soon. 
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